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GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) features a GPU clock speed of 540 MHz, and the 256 MB of DDR2 RAM runs at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 310, which features GPU core speed of 589 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 16 SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310 31 Watts
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) 47 Watts
Difference: 16 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 310 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 310 16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) should be much (approximately 83%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) 8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310 4712 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 3928 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is much (about 83%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) 4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310 2356 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 1964 (83%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

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GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GT 310

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) GeForce GT 310
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year April 2007 November 2009
Code Name G84 GT218
Memory 256 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 589 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 2000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 31 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 16000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 4712 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 2356 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 16
Texture Mapping Units 16 8
Render Output Units 8 4
Bus Type DDR2 DDR2
Bus Width 128-bit 64-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 40 nm
Transistors 289 million 260 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GT 310

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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